That raises the question of whether Tencent can replicate its success in overseas markets where its social apps are largely absent. Honor of Kings and a few other Tencent games have leveraged the massive WeChat and QQ messengers to acquire users. Although Arena of Valor didn’t quite take off in Western markets, it has done well in Southeast Asia in part thanks to Tencent’s publishing partnership with the region’s internet giant Garena. The studio is credited for producing one of the world’s most-played mobile games, Honor of Kings, a mobile multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game, and taking it overseas under the title Arena of Valor. The wind, he said, “refers to the ever-growing desire for quality by mobile gamers.” Breaking the wave, on the other hand, entails TiMi applying new development tools to building high-budget, high-quality AAA mobile games.
Gao borrowed the Chinese expression “riding the wind and breaking the wave” to characterize TiMi’s global strategy.
#WECHAT WINDOWS RETURN FULL#
Eleven-year-old TiMi currently has a team working out of Los Angeles on global business and plans to grow it into a full development studio that “helps us understand Western players and gives us a stronger global perspective,” said the studio’s international business director Vincent Gao. in 2020, the studio told TechCrunch this week, though it refused to reveal the exact size of its North American office. Tencent’s storied gaming studio TiMi is looking to accelerate international expansion by tripling its headcount in the U.S. We will surely cover that when we return. There will be no roundup next week as China observes the Lunar New Year, but the battle only intensifies for the country’s internet giants, particularly short-video rivals Douyin (TikTok’s Chinese version) and Kuaishou, which will be vying for user time over the big annual holiday. The spotlight this week is back on Tencent, which has made some interesting moves in gaming and content publishing. Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China Roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world.